Lifehacked: How One Family from the Slums Made Millions Selling Apps

Allen Wong

Allen Wong is the developer behind many best-selling apps such as 5-0 Radio and Police Scanner+. He became a self-made millionaire before he was 25.

But, life wasn't always this grand for him. He was the only person in his family earning an income. And, he came from an oppressed family that grew up in the slums. Regardless, the apps he published were downloaded by over 25 million people.

His apps have been featured in many places, including Wired.com, NBC News, and CNN. Now he's sharing the story on how he did it, the crises he struggled with, and what his father taught him to be successful.

App companies have paid him thousands of dollars for consultant work, and he has helped them increase their download numbers by over 1000%. One of those apps was downloaded by over 100,000 users in one day. And now he is revealing his marketing secrets for the first time in this book.

This book was written with non-technical people in mind. The book covers both life and entrepreneurial lessons, and not all of the book is about app development.

of the mold are the ones who end up the most successful. “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now

fitting of my philosophy. An agnostic is a person who believes that it is impossible to know of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena. The atheists I know are actively against those who believe in a God or believe in spiritualism. You see them on internet message boards all of the time. If there’s a YouTube video that deals with something even remotely religious, you will see a debate between atheists and religious people. It would be nice to see a healthy debate

going on in my life as well as because I wanted the app to be perfect. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so there have been many nights when I’d stay up until 10 A.M. the next morning while still coding and tweaking the app. And my anti-procrastinator attitude also prevents me from sleeping and waiting until the next day to finish the app. Even as I write the final chapters of this book, it is all happening in the wee hours of the morning. Finally, I decided to pull the greatest marketing tactic

still had dreams of obtaining a better life for himself and his future family. He figured that he could do so by putting his skills at administering herbal medicine to good use in the United States. Since he was not formally educated on administering herbal medicine, he would spend whatever extra money he had earned on medical books. He owned shelves upon shelves of herbalist medical books. Eventually, he co-founded with his older brother an herbalist drugstore in New York City’s Chinatown. That

customers like they’re the only ones left in the world. 12 Graduating The Phone Call Burned Into Memory 13 Aftermath Columbia University Lifehack #21: Don’t wait around. Create your own opportunities. 14 Age of the Apps App development tip #6: Have features worthy of showing off. App development tip #7: Figure out what’s lacking out there. 15 The Big Break App development tip #8: User reviews are extremely important. App development tip #9: Make it easy to market the app. App